Keeping an Inventory - Dell Service Tags

On Thursday I talked about the value of an inventory and how it can come in handy if you need to call for service. Most of the companies I work with use Dell workstations and servers. These machines have a service tag, a serial number that the support technician will need in order to access warranty information for the machine. This is another time that you may end up finding yourself crawling under a desk or squeezing between cabinets in your server room to get information in an emergency.

Once again, I have a workaround for you. You can use this Visual Basic Script to pull the service tag from the machine that you're logged into:

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strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colSMBIOS = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * from Win32_SystemEnclosure")
For Each objSMBIOS in colSMBIOS
Wscript.Echo "Service Tag: " & objSMBIOS.SerialNumber
Next
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Simply copy the code between the dashes (do not copy the dashes) and save it to a file called "delltag.vbs". Run this file on the machine where you are trying to get the tag, and it will pop up a window with the service tag information.

Again, it is best to be proactive and do this before you have a problem. If you find yourself with a dead computer or server and you don't have this information handy, you will be getting your hands dirty searching for this information on the machine itself, which, in an emergency, can be more than just an inconvenience, it can be the difference between meeting your service level agreement or missing it!